


A Letter of Apology

by KogoDogo



Category: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Insanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 20:56:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20020903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KogoDogo/pseuds/KogoDogo
Summary: Vandrith dedicated his life to ALMSIVI. Now, the world is singing something dark and his piety will not save him.





	A Letter of Apology

He hadn’t known why he did it. The urge had seized him and, before he knew it, he had the man by the throat against the wall of St. Olms. The beggar--may he find forgiveness in his heart--had looked at him with terrified, exhausted eyes and pleaded from the very bottom of his soul for amnesty, desperate and afraid and unsure of what he had done to rile the Ordinator to such anger. It was only when his fellows dragged him away from the wretch that he realized, with great horror, what he had done.

Vandrith sat quietly in his quarters in the barracks beneath the High Fane. A quill shook feebly in his hand. Nearly illegible apologies lay before him, scrawled out on battered parchment, addressed to a mer to whom he could offer no acceptable explanation. Excuses, maybe, but nothing that would ever satisfy his desire to know why an officer of Indoril law nearly strangled him to death in the street. Sighing, Vandrith raked a hand through his hair and tried, once more, to hold himself steady enough to write.

The quill scratched against the paper. Ink blotted messily from the tip.

_... the events were regrettable, and I offer my wholehearted apologies for any distress I may have caused. I cannot rightly ex... _

A black splotch blobbed onto the page as a loud, shrill sound erupted behind him like a banshee’s shriek. Every muscle in his body tensed as he jerked around, heart leaping up his throat. It died in the stagnant air of the barracks, consumed by the dull roar of parishioners at the High Fane letting out of service and filing down the halls. They laughed and comforted one another, they gossiped about their neighbors. 

He waited to see if the sound came again, but as the crowd’s voices faded to nothing, he turned to his writing once more. Using a cloth from a neighboring table, he dabbed up what he could of the stain and tried again.

_... explain why it is that I... _

A melodic screech echoed through the room. It wavered, up-down-up-down, like the Indoril choir that had been hired to sing at his cousin’s funeral. Though high and shrill, it was beautiful in a way, though a strange padding sound echoed behind it. He chewed thoughtfully on the end of his quill, ink staining his lips, as he struggled to place both of the noises. Scuffling, thudding, rhythmic pat-pat-pat, all set to the sound of this strange, mysterious voice. 

A trail of comberry ink dribbled down to his chin, then onto his scarf. He stared back at the doorway to the barracks long enough to see one of his superiors trudge by, realizing that the noise beneath the singing was none other than his footsteps. As he drifted further away, the song grew quieter and quieter. A cold, sickening feeling blossomed in Vandrith’s gut.

_... why it is that I listened to the Song. It screamed so loud, it was screaming about you. _

Vandrith paused, examined the words, and his heart sank clear to his stomach. A wispy laugh blew through the room like a breeze, the words of a ghost haunting him. The blood in his veins grew icy and he whipped his head around to find the culprit, only to find himself alone. Only the glow of his oil lamp accompanied him, the flame dancing as seductively as a Hammerfell performer.

_ When you sleep, you will hear it, too. I promise, f’lah, we are of the same stock. Our Father watches, smiling, bidding us closer. The Song screamed of poison. It screamed of  _ _ you _ .

The words came out so fluid, though the more he wrote, the less he felt in control of his own hand. His face contorted in disgust as he watched what was spilling upon the paper and he struggled in vain to keep his arm still. The quill grew shakier, the words more smeared and illegible as he fought to wrench control of his own body from whatever it was that had him enthralled. Random streaks of ink darted between letters as he tried to force himself to write something, anything of his own will. Whatever held him was strong, though, and the longer it kept him writing, the more aware he became of the melodic, glorious music that swirled around him.

_ He calls from the Mountain, glory on high, with cleansing fire by his right hand and the blessing of his flesh extended to his faithful... _

An entire symphony, an entire choir, roared around him at a deafening volume. His vision grew blurry and his head pulsed, the words of the phantoms lost to him although he could feel their meaning in the very pit of his bones. Memories rushed back to him, not all of them his, some of them not yet happened. He could see great, rolling red clouds spilling over the land, filling the room with blight and horror. Dark shadows crept into the edge of his vision, silhouettes of people long lost. Some he knew, most he did not.

They laughed. Gods, they laughed so loud, and they sang a song that seemed absolutely vile and venomous. His whole body trembled.

_... and his faithful shall rise praise be to the sixth house house unmourned for we are brothers you and i and when the father comes we shall drive the foreign dogs from this land praise be to lord dagoth and when he comes from the mountain on clouds of ash we will be cleansed praise be praise be to our father to the lord dagoth we will know freedom... _

No. No, he was raised Indoril, the will of ALMSIVI pulsed through his veins as readily as his own blood. He had fought and struggled and trained and purified himself, he was the pride of his family, he had been accepted into the order of the Ordinators. He had sacrificed so much for the Temple and his House, and he marched in the shadow of the Tribunal with pride and piety. His armor was blessed with the protection of St. Nerevar and consecrated in the waters of his sacred home. He had been baptized in blood and sweat, honored in battle against the forces of the Devil. That bastard’s influence wouldn’t win, not now.

Not here.

Pain surged behind his eyes and he cringed, even as his hand kept scribbling away. The music around him surged and pulsed with the agony, tearing through him like a butcher’s cleaver. Voices became more coherent with every passing second, dying down into whispers before exploding into hymns and praise. They spoke to him about many things, all at once, the information overwhelming. Images rolled through his brain like illustrations in a flipped book, out of order and so bright, so vivid.

He saw his cousin, still dead, decomposed and staring at him like the walking dead, gesturing weakly and grinning, beckoning him into metal, half-melted halls that billowed with red mist. He saw the beggar he attacked, sitting quietly on a tattered bedroll in a mostly empty Vivec apartment, smiling as men wearing nothing but crimson bodypaint came down on him with iron daggers. He saw his brothers filing into an unmarked cave in the southern swamps of Vvardenfell, where dark and dangerous creatures dwelt, twisted and profane, waiting to strike them down in the shadows. Another of his order stood alone in the midst of an ash storm, surrounded by toppled homes and a towering stronghold, wearing a hair shirt that glittered with enchantments. A half-broken creature, overgrown with flesh, silently dragged after him with a hungry gleam in its eyes.

He saw death, blood, mutilations, murder. He heard names, names of people like him, those who embraced the call of this  _ thing _ . He felt pain from steel and spell washing over him, warm and wet and gruesome and harrowing, spilling into the pits of his guts and flowing with the song. It felt like he had been poisoned. What had he been slipped?

_... traitors to the POISON SONG singing loud singing loud the tribunal know the POISON SONG sing along sing along... _

“Brother Vandrith?”

The voice was soft, curious, but stern. It dripped with concern. Only the sound of footsteps led him to believe that it was an actual person, the scuffling of sandals alerting him to the presence of another of his ilk. He almost recognized it, but gods if the song would quiet enough for him to think of a face for the sound. The visions blotted out his memories. He struggled to recall names.

Not Berel. Not Vanryth. Not Gilran. Not Drovoth.

_... WHO ARE YOU WHO ARE YOU WHO ARE YOU we will not tell... _

Was it male? Female? Vildras? Berana? Vivec? Hermaeus Mora?

_... traiTOR shadow of the OLD BLOOD you are not of us NOT OF US kill it KILL IT... _

“Brother Vandrith, you seem troubled. Are you--?”

Silence. The song (the Song!) drowned it out. It screamed.

He screamed back.

With every ounce of his will, his energy, his might, he tore himself up from the desk and threw the quill to the ground. When it landed too softly to satisfy, he picked up the ink well and hurled it into the wall, watching it shatter into a satisfying explosion of comberry and glass. The oil lamp went next, pitched into the ground with so much force that the flame extinguished, shalk oil and redware scattering across the ground. Books followed it. His helmet next.

He screamed. He screamed. He  _ screamed _ .

Half of it was curses, the others, prayer. At one point he began singing, but he didn’t know the words. Fingers wove into his scarf and pulled until he felt something pop in his throat, then move to his hair and pulled until it felt like his scalp was on fire. Screams became shrieks became music, and his arm cleaned the desk of everything that had been left alone, plates and tankards and empty bottles clattering off the edge, denting and shattering.

Something grabbed his arm. He shoved it away with all of his strength. He heard the woof of air escaping it, the crack of its head hitting the sandstone wall. He heard footsteps, dozens of them, pouring down the hallway like an invading army.

_ Heir to the father. Heir to the throne. Look what they’ve done to you. _

His eyes practically glowed with hatred when he glanced up and saw, standing in the doorway, Berel Sala. The leader of Vivec’s Ordinators, high and mighty and dirty and corrupt and  _ filthy and wrong and challenging him _ . He stood with a scowl and something passing concern, though voices lingered, the song whispering of what he really thought. He was mocking him. 

Mocking him?

It was his idea to write the letter of apology.

Twenty lashes and a letter.

Mocking him.

_ You are free to dream, heir to the father. Look at what they’ve done to you. _

He charged, fists clenched and screaming, into the crowd.

_ Now what will you do to them? _


End file.
